


make the rougher places plain

by greywash



Category: The Nice Guys (2016)
Genre: 12 steps, Alcoholism, California history, California missions, Christmas, Dogs, Every canon needs more dogs come on, Families of Choice, Family, Like, M/M, Mission San Fernando Rey de España, O L.A., Public Sex, Religion, Valley, but what asshole names their three main characters 'Healy' 'Holland' and 'Holly' tho, the
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-19
Updated: 2016-12-19
Packaged: 2018-09-09 18:21:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8907052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greywash/pseuds/greywash
Summary: The Christmas before, when March'd asked, it wasn't that it hadn't seemed weird, because it'd seemed pretty fucking weird even then, but that had been one kind of weird, a more normal kind of weird, back then when Healy'd replied, I don't believe in God, and March'd just said, Come on, the kid likes you. It's another kind of weird altogether, now.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [th_esaurus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/th_esaurus/gifts).



> This is a treat for **th_esaurus**. **th_esaurus** , I love your _Nice Guys_ fic and hope that you enjoy this. Happy Holidays,  &c.
> 
> **Warnings** : No archive warnings required. Does, however, deal with some of the scrubbier themes in the canon; also involves characters having complicated feelings about religion, as humans are sometimes wont to do. 
> 
> Thank you to ~~my anonymous partner-in-crime~~ **breathedout** for all kinds of things, including, but by no means limited to, the beta.

**1978.**

The only reason why Healy's not still sweating his way through another eight hours of surveillance crammed into the back of his car parked on the third floor of the parking garage at Vine and Melrose watching Nelson spend his afternoon alternately yelling at his plant manager over the phone, chain-smoking, and trying to fuck his twenty-four-year-old secretary is that it's the 15th, and Holly has a half-day, and three weeks ago Healy'd promised to take her to Santa Anita after school, so. 

So.

So instead he spends the afternoon working his way through a sweating plastic cup of ginger ale and ice, mostly ice, and letting her perform an apparently exhaustive cost-benefit analysis of each possible betting opportunity while also persisting, touchingly, in the belief that Healy knows fuck all about horses. She ends up winning 43 bucks, and then, over pop and burgers, is enough of an idiot to try and give him his five back. He shakes his head, pushes it across the table towards her.

She leaves off chewing on her straw long enough to glare at him. "I asked for a loan," she says. 

He sits back, wiping his mouth, crumples his napkin up and drops it on his plate. "Yeah." 

"Not a handout." 

"Keep it," he says, and then, "Merry Christmas," and she rolls her eyes.

"You already got me something. _And_ you wrapped it. I have eyes, you know, it's sitting under the tree." 

"Oh, thanks, remind me to take that back," he says, and she rolls her eyes again, then returns to her straw. It's really repulsive. March does it too but at least he does it because he's trying to—Holly _better_ not've started smoking.

"So," she says, not looking up. "Does that mean you're actually coming inside tonight, or..."

Healy sighs, leaning back. "March and March investigations, huh?"

"Oh, please, I've still got three and a half more years of school."

He holds up a finger: one. "Seven and a half, at _least_ ," he says, which gets him another eye roll; so he holds up another finger: two. "If you actually want strangers to talk to you, you're either going to have to be a hell of a lot more subtle, or a hell of a lot more direct."

"Yeah, but you're not a stranger." She works the end of her straw around with her teeth and watches him tilt his head back: a hit, acknowledged. "Come on, what'd he do? He comes in with a black eye and drags himself around the house like someone kicked him in the balls while you scram for four days, you can't expect me to _not_ pump you for info."

"The black eye wasn't me," Healy says. "You haven't started smoking, have you?"

"What?" Her eyebrows scrunch together: it makes her look even younger, which makes him feel tender and battered and overwhelmingly, inescapably furious. "No?"

He leans forward, arms on the edge of the table. "Because if your dad's been, I don't know, convincing you that—"

"I haven't started smoking, Jesus!" 

Ordinary adolescent fury, he thinks; normal. Kid stuff. He leans back, nodding: satisfied, probably. He watches her eat the last two bites of her burger. 

"By the way," she says, dragging a fry through the puddle of ketchup at the edge of her plate, "I did notice," and he shifts, making the cover of the plastic booth squeak. She looks up at him and sticks the fry in her mouth, chewing resolutely. _The March eye_ , he thinks, apropos of nothing: it's not how Holland looks at him.

He exhales. Nods at her plate. "You done?" 

"Depends," she says. "Are you going to talk to me in the car?"

"Well I'm sure as hell not doing it here," he mutters, and drags himself up to go pay.

All in all, she lets him get away with it for longer than he expects: nearly home, her slouching back in the passenger seat, popping her gum in time to the radio even though she hates the Bee Gees, before she leans forward and switches it off. 

"Come on," she says. "What'd he do? Kick Romeo in front of you?"

"He wouldn't kick Romeo whether or not it was in front of me," Healy counters.

"True," she acknowledges.

"He loves that dog more than you," he adds, and she sighs, dropping her head back to thunk against the headrest; he glances, over, obscurely concerned. 

"True, and also kind of a low blow," she says. "Come on, what's the deal? Did you guys have a _fight_?" she asks. "Don't you remember why you're _friends_?" 

Her voice is heavy with sarcasm, and he winces: he'd said more or less exactly that to her two months ago, after Jessica had tried out for cheerleader and—a greater betrayal—made the squad. He indicates. Checks his mirrors, slides right; then settles back in his seat. 

"I'm not trying to stonewall you," he explains. 

"Yeah, well." She pulls her knees up. "You're doing an awfully good job for someone who's trying to do something else."

"Hey," he says. "Feet on the floor"; and she snaps her gum and doesn't listen to him, which is about par for the course, when you get right down to it.

He pulls into the driveway. Stops, and rubs the back of his hand over his mouth. 

"It's just not real fair to put you in the middle," he explains. "That's all."

"Give me a break, Jack," she says, "I'm _already_ in the middle"; and he nods. 

"That's true," he says, quiet. 

The Christmas before, when March'd asked, it wasn't that it hadn't seemed weird, because it'd seemed pretty fucking weird even then, but that had been one kind of weird, a more normal kind of weird, back then when Healy'd replied, _I don't believe in God_ , and March'd just said, _Come on, the kid likes you_. Which. Which appeared to be true, for some reason. So Healy'd hauled up to that terrible sad sack rental of theirs at eight fifteen in the morning on Christmas Day still sweating bourbon but wearing a suit, and all through the service Holly'd sat in between him and March looking attentive, probably planning arson, and wearing a leaf-green knee-length dress. It's another kind of weird altogether, now. Healy puts the parking brake on, and turns the key. 

He says, "We just aren't seeing eye to eye on something, is all."

"So, _and_?" Holly asks. "Am I going to have to find a new mom?"

It startles him into a bark of laughter, which it shouldn't, probably. He rubs at his forehead. "Nah," he says. "No one else'd take him."

"Damn straight," Holly says; and he jerks his head: "Get out, kid."

She does. Or—well, she gives him a slow, appraising look: up and down, weighing him up, and _then_ she gets out of the car. Healy watches her all the way up to the front door, watches her bend down to scratch at Romeo's raggedy furry face, scooting him back with her palm to keep him from wriggling out around her legs. He waits until she's wrestled the both of them back inside and closed the door behind them, until the porch light's gone out and it's well past long enough for her to throw the bolt, before he turns the car back on.

It's not even nine. He could go track down Nelson, watch him watch TV with his kids, kiss his wife. Instead Healy ends up driving around, not really going anywhere: meandering up Coldwater, down Woodman; over the 405 and then back up Woodley to skirt the kids cruising on Van Nuys. Eventually he turns east again, drives in circles; then finds himself somehow at two in the morning parked at the edge of the little wedge of streets boxing in the mission, where Holly'd had to go one late-summer Saturday in September, to take pictures for a school project. Healy remembers, with an acid-sharp clarity, watching her trailing her fingertips along the chalky white plaster on the inside walls, the two of them five steps behind her, sweat cooling in the shady shelter of the adobe; then back outside in the heat, where she'd taken a series of photographs of the long portico of the Convento on their new Minolta while March, perched on the edge of the fountain, lobbed advice at her back, most of it useless; then the two of them squinting up at the statue of Serra with identical expressions of skepticism: both of them wearing sunglasses; Holly's mouth twisted suspiciously; March holding a cigarette, half-forgotten, and asking her inane questions about California history and L.A. geography and mission architecture so that she could correct him: his shirt stretched tight across his shoulders, his golden arms. By the time Healy talks himself into turning back south everything has gone quiet. This late even Sepulveda is glossy, shining with amber streetlights; working girls, dealers, old cars: the whole thing's a lot less glamorous by daylight. His stuff's still in the back. He could stop, he thinks; pull up outside some shady motel and go inside; he could shower, have a shave, crash out for a few hours on a sagging mattress with a spring that'd spend all night jabbing him in the kidneys; but they slide past his windows instead: the Pink Cloud; the Good Knight Inn; the Tahiti, with a string of multicolor Christmas lights wound around the gate out front, blinking slowly, and the palm trees in the median looming, shadowy, in the dark.

He parks, at some point; must do, so that when he jerks out of sleep the first thing he sees is a 7-11 just under a billboard for Marlboros, before he connects his sudden return to consciousness with March's open hand on the passenger window, the smack of his broad palm. Healy leans over and pops the lock before he even really thinks about it: the force of habit, even when he's asleep fully dressed beside a strip mall driveway and the sky's just turning from inky black to the rich blue-green of deep ocean. March gets in with a burst of cool air, then locks the door beside him.

March crosses his arms over his chest. Uncrosses them, then leans forward to fiddle with the vents: pointless, with the engine off. Sits back. "Have you been sleeping here?" he asks.

Healy looks straight ahead. "No," he says. "Not—I mean, I've got a room," he explains. "Motel. Usually."

"For fuck's sake, Healy," March sighs, "and you think you're the brains of the operation"; and rubs at his face. 

Healy puts his palms on the steering wheel. Folding and unfolding his fingers; sitting shoulder to shoulder with March while in front of them a white van pulls up to unload bundled copies of the _Times_ for ten minutes before pulling away; watching the last of the stars wink out slowly as the sun rises behind the 7-11. Healy cranks his window down an inch or two, to dry out their breath fogging up at the base of the windshield. 

"You don't have to come if you don't want to," March says: fuck him. "It's not like we're going to handcuff you and throw you in the trunk."

"But you're going," Healy says, rough.

"Yeah," March says, snappish. " _Yeah_ we're go—why is this suddenly such a big fucking deal?"

The air sneaking in over his cracked window is desert-sharp, cold and dry. Healy breathes deep.

" _Fuck_." March reaches over to punch him on the shoulder, not gently. Healy turns, glaring at his open idiot face; his scrunched-together sandy caterpillar eyebrows; his unhappy twisted-up expression, not unlike Holly's; and irritated Healy smacks him back, March's shoulder shoving back to pucker the car seat upholstery, so March slaps—, which is— _ridiculous_ , two grown-ass men slapping at each other's hands in the front seat of an Olds at a quarter to seven on a Saturday morning until Healy drops his fist down to March's slacks and March sucks in a breath; hand closing tight on Healy's wrist while Healy yanks the fly open, fast; his heart beating hard. March's mouth is open, he needs a shave, his eyes are wide; and Healy's always had a weakness for him; his mouth; his blue eyes, really.

"Anyone around?" Healy asks, watching him watch the street.

"No," says March, and swallows; his right hand tight on Healy's right wrist moving: sending each shift and flex back up along his hot skin, an echo. If they weren't here he'd get on his knees, Healy thinks; he'd drag the jacket off March's shoulders and twist it tight around his forearms, pinioned back between his body and bare air; he'd yank March's perfectly-coordinated trousers down to his ankles so they'd keep him in one spot, hold him still. Instead Healy's barely got the room to get March's pants open, jerk him off rough and fast while March stares out the windshield breathing too loudly, his licked lips parted: a damp pink lowercase 'o'. He always makes a little high-pitched sound when he comes, _always_ , vulnerable and sweet; barbed it always digs itself into the meat of Healy's organs. Pulls.

Healy takes his hand back. March's hand comes too, fingers still curled; lighter now, on his wrist. Healy has to lean up to dig his handkerchief out of his jeans pocket, and March lets go. 

The seat creaks when Healy settles. Piece of shit. "Hey," March says; Healy feels him watching, shakes his head. "Hey, no," March repeats, quiet, palm on—on his thigh, sliding up over his stomach, under his jacket; fingers warm on his ribs; and Healy shakes his head again, folds his handkerchief in half and then quarters, uses the least-damp edge to wipe off his face while March, spectacular idiot that he is, is twisting to press his face against the side of Healy's throat, right there on Burbank Boulevard, out in plain sight.

"You can't—," Healy says, and then stops, swallowing hard: hand settling flat on the back of March's head, bending low. It's a stupid fucking risk to take— _here_ , especially—but Healy's not dead or a robot and the _mouth_ on him: Healy keeps his teeth a careful half-inch apart and his eyes open best he can but he can't keep himself silent, not really; and even flushed red-hot all under his clothes and his stomach twisting-sick and after, his fingers keep curling and uncurling in March's thick, soft hair.

He lets March do him up. Lets him lean up and sit forward in his seat and crack his neck like the asshole he is, apparently none the worse for wear. His fingers are still resting on the inseam of Healy's jeans, a casual two-thirds of the way up his inner thigh. Healy's hand falls over his, apparently without any exercise of will, and when March turns his palm up, fingers separating, Healy lets him.

"You want coffee?" he asks, after a minute. The 7-11's open; they've had worse.

"Nah," March says, quiet. Squeezes, tight; and Healy closes his eyes.

"So," March says: gentle, like he talks to Holly when she's been crying, or to Romeo. Or to, checkbook open, a grieving widow. "You don't want to come to church with us on Christmas."

Healy opens his eyes. Stares out the windshield. The sky, pink and golden; the tops of the trees lining the alley swaying gently, a pungent, ebullient green. "Not really, no," he says.

"You came last year."

Healy shifts. "Last year was different." 

Out of the corner of his eye he can see March nod, hand tightening on his hand. "Your family religious?" March asks.

"My family's dead," Healy says.

"Yeah, before that, smartass."

"Sort of." Healy shrugs. "Catholic."

"Yeah," March says, quiet. March isn't Catholic: wrong coast, not Irish enough, too young. March is the kind of asshole who keeps steady eye contact while he drinks too much and would deny under torture that he feeds the dog from the table and has a finely-honed system for getting extra money out of old ladies who've hired him to help them find heirloom jewelry stolen by their ne'er-do-well grandsons after the bastards've already fucked off to Hawai'i, long gone; the kind of prick who just smirks and sucks him off in the big walnut-framed bed a half-block away while Jack chews on his knuckles and tries not to choke to death on weekend mornings when the dog is whining at their door and they've slept too late to be sure Holly's still safely asleep down the hall. Healy hadn't thought March was religious at all. The church they'd taken him to last Christmas was Episcopal, so basically: Healy's entire childhood as filtered by a particularly well-crafted episode of _The Twilight Zone_ ; Holland'd spent the service looking zoned out and a little too mellow; sunlight streaming through the windows as Holly's sweet voice lifted up: _snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow_ , her hands in their hands at her sides, held down low. The church'd been just around the corner—from the old house, last year—so after the service they'd walked home and then sat out back with their legs dangling over the edge of the empty pool, passing around a carton of freezer-burnt rocky road ice cream from Thrifty: three spoons. 

"You parked legally?" Healy asks, squinting at March's car in the rearview.

"What?" March looks at him. "Yeah?"

Healy nods. Lets go of March's fingers and turns the engine on, shifts into gear; pulls out low-speed and slides around the corner, crawling down Rhodes and then into their driveway, just around to the right. Holly's window is dark, still; the miracle of winter vacation to a fourteen-year-old, a sudden glut of free time, unstructured days, enough sleep. She'll wake up at eleven rumpled and pink-cheeked and crabby and come down expecting Holland to put bananas in her pancakes, Romeo bouncing in circles around her fuzzy slippers, wagging hard. Healy turns the car off. He rolls his window up. His hand finding March's hand in between them, half in shadow, warm.

"Back in New York," Healy says, after a moment. "You know." He pauses. "The second time I went to AA." 

March hums: low, curling up at the end: _between us_ , Healy thinks; and nods, grateful. 

"It was like everyone there thought they were doing Jesus a personal favor," he says, "taking me back"; and March snorts and says, "Like that wasn't their fucking job."

"Yeah," Healy says, heart jumping, no reason. "Yeah." 

March curls his index finger in, tucked between them, palm to palm. Ticklish. Healy rubs his thumb over the back of March's knuckles: split a couple times too many, rough.

"Holly's mom went to church," March says, quiet. "I guess that's a thing they still do in England. Christmas and Easter. Her whole life."

Oh, thinks Healy: Anglican, of course. Still blindsided, somehow.

Stupid.

"So I figure." March sighs. "I'm a pretty lousy dad, but that's still one thing I can do."

"You're not a lousy dad," Healy says: instant. Mostly true. "You've got a great kid."

"Yeah, but that's just Holly being Holly." Holland's right hand rises, slides forward: "I just sit back," a plane soaring to clear air; "let her go."

After they'd gone to the mission back in September he'd bought them enchiladas and green corn tamales at a Mexican restaurant that'd been around for an age: _Where my dad used to go_ , Holland had explained, _when he wanted a drink_ ; and in the booth beside him Holly had put her head on Holland's shoulder; and Jack'd watched him kiss her hair. Then, after, Holland'd talked about the smell of the incinerators, about swimming at Hansen Dam; he'd explained that the mission's chapel was a reconstruction, that the original had been demolished in the earthquake back in '71, and that only the Convento had survived; and Jack'd just smiled in the dark. _Before my time_ , he'd said, because in '71 he'd still been oozing his way slowly westward from New York; and then he'd put his arm around the back of March's broad bare shoulders in the new house in the big walnut bed with the driveway curving to the right from a sleepy tree-lined street where no one pays too much attention and there's a bevy of kids Holly's age and half the neighbor moms are divorced, united mostly by Quaaludes and a shared self-involved admiration of March from behind. It's the same kind of neighborhood, Healy imagines, where he must've grown up: sun-drenched, orange trees, scrappy lawns; just with all the details translated a quarter-century, the Bee Gees on the radio and the Valley on the up-and-up and Holly in her pajamas in the bathroom down the hall sitting on the toilet lid with a long-suffering expression, letting Jessica try to feather her hair. A family place, Jack thinks: nice. Its own kind of messed up, sure; but nice. 

"Oh." He nods. "Right, yeah. 'Just sit back and let her go.' _Got_ it."

"Oh, fuck off," March says: exasperated, Healy thinks. A little indignant.

"I'm just saying," Healy says, opening his door. "I really am the brains of the operation, if you think that's what you do."

"Shut up, asshole," March tells him; but he's tilting his head back against the headrest, smiling.

**Author's Note:**

> There are a few details of Los Angeles setting and chronology in this that are either lightly fudged or straight-up fictionalized because the 70's are not my decade; I figured that was probably okay since it's equally true of the movie (I am unfortunately unfamiliar with the novel), but apologies if they catch anyone wrong. 
> 
> The title is from "[Comfort, comfort ye my people](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTOeAl-Ph8I)" [[lyrics](http://www.hymnary.org/text/comfort_comfort_now_my_people)], which is a very pretty Advent hymn sung in many different Christian traditions. The line Holly sings is from "[In the Bleak Midwinter](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0aL9rKJPr4)," which: if there is a Christmas carol that seems more surreal in Southern California, I have yet to hear it.
> 
> Anyway. Ask me about sleazy motels on the north end of Sepulveda! They are an abiding interest.


End file.
